1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an image recording apparatus capable of recording or printing characters and other image data on a plurality of kinds of recording media, and more particularly to such an image recording apparatus of the type provided with a manual medium insertion tray on a rear side of its main body housing.
2. Description of Related Art
There is known an image recording apparatus provided with a manual medium insertion tray disposed in its main body housing and constructed to be manually loaded with a recording medium such as paper sheets. This image recording apparatus is of a single-function type such as a printer, a copier and a facsimile device of an ink-jet or laser type, or of a multi-function type having a printing function, a copying function, a scanning function and a facsimile transmission-reception function.
One type of an image recording apparatus constructed as described above has an image reading device disposed in an upper part of its main body housing and configured to read image data on an original, a sheet supply cassette disposed in a lower part of the main body housing and constructed to accommodate a first recording medium in the form of paper sheets, for example, a recording device disposed above the medium supply cassette and configured to record an image according to the image data on the first recording medium fed from the medium supply cassette through a U-turn path, and a medium ejecting portion disposed on a front side of the main body housing and constructed to eject the first recording medium received from the recording device. This type of image recording apparatus further has a first manual medium insertion tray disposed on a rear side of the main body housing such that the first manual medium insertion tray is inclined with its proximal end located below its distal end. A second recording medium is manually inserted into the first manual medium insertion tray, subjected to a recording operation of the recording device and ejected from the medium ejecting portion on the front side.
Another type of image recording apparatus has an arrangement similar to that of the image recording apparatus described just above, and further has a medium inlet which is disposed on the front side of the main body housing and through which a second manual medium insertion tray manually loaded with a third recording medium in the form of a DVD, for example, is fed toward and through the recording device so that an image is recorded on a surface of the third recording medium by the recording device. The second manual medium insertion tray is returned back to the medium inlet after the recording operation of the recording device on the third recording medium.